A plant facility managing system is capable of acquiring respective facility parameters held by a plurality of facilities operating inside a plant to make a diagnosis for trouble prediction.
FIG. 4 is a functional block diagram showing an example of a configuration of a conventional plant facility managing system connected to a decentralized managing system. Block 1 is a plant. A plurality of facilities, shown by 11, 12, . . . 1n are operating inside a plant 1, Each facility is referred to as E1, E2, . . . En, respectively. Each facility is a single unit comprising any of a measuring instrument, rotary equipment, still equipment, or combination thereof.
Facilities E1, E2, . . . En are connected to a field bus 2, and communicate with a controller 3 similarly connected to the field bus 2 to be thereby controlled. A control bus 4 is connected to the controller 3 and an operation monitoring unit 5 for communicating therewith.
Block 6 is a plant facility managing system. Block 61 is a field communication server which acquires respective facility parameters held by the facilities operating inside the plant 1 during a given cycle. The facility parameters are sent via the controller 3 for storage in a plant facility managing database 62 for a predetermined period of time.
Block 63 is a facility input unit for reading the respective facility parameters of the facilities E1, E2, . . . En, as targets for diagnosis, from the plant facility managing database 62, thereby setting the respective facility parameters therein. Block 64 is a diagnosis processing unit provided with diagnostic programs D1, D2, . . . , Dn, corresponding to the facilities E1, E2, . . . En, as the targets for diagnosis Block 65 is a diagnosis output unit for holding results R1, R2, . . . , Rn of diagnoses executed according to the diagnostic programs D1, D2, . . . , Dn, respectively.
Block 66 is a diagnosis control means for communicating with the plant facility managing database 62, facility input unit 63, diagnosis processing unit 64, and diagnosis output unit 65, to thereby execute sequence control of diagnostic steps. Block 67 is a man-machine means for communicating with the diagnosis control means 66, and Block 67a is a management screen as displayed on a monitor.
FIG. 5 shows a display example of the management screen 67a. In the figure, there is shown a hierarchical structure where the facilities E1, E2, . . . En are managed in respective folders in an upper hierarchy while the facility parameters, and information on the results of the diagnoses against the respective facilities are managed in a lower hierarchy for the respective folders. In this case, designations of the facility parameters are each referred to simply as “facility parameter name”, and designations of the results of the diagnoses are each referred to as “diagnosis name-facility parameter name”.
In JP 2003-316424 A, there is described an equipment diagnosis system for integrally managing, and executing diagnoses against field apparatuses, disposed at respective spots within a plant.
A conventional plant facility managing system has had the following problems:
(1) A diagnostic process is independent by the facility, so that it is not possible to easily carry out a diagnosis against a plurality of facilities as targets for the diagnosis (a comprehensive diagnosis against, for example, facilities E1, and E2 by making use of respective facility parameters for the facilities E1, and E2).
(2) It will be possible to attain a more reliable diagnosis by making use of the result of a diagnosis (diagnosis output) as an input for another diagnosis, however, correlating of the former with the latter cannot be easily implemented.